“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.'” ― St. Anthony the Great

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

"NY Governor Cuomo made nearly $800K on a book that sold 3K copies?"

Via Instapundit: There’s a bit of a minor mystery regarding New York Governor Andrew Cuomo which was picked up by the Buffalo News this week. The Governor recently released his tax returns in the usual fashion and an interesting entry showed up. He took in a significant amount of money from his publisher for a book which was released several years ago. And by “significant” I mean it was more than $200K. That memoir must be selling like hot cakes to generate that much in royalties after it’s been on the shelves since 2014. But that’s not the solution to this puzzle because the book only sold a total of barely three thousand copies.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo reported his income last year more than doubled from the previous year, thanks to another round of royalty payments on a 2014 HarperCollins memoir that saw lackluster sales.
In all, Cuomo has made $783,000 from HarperCollins for his book. The book sold 3,200 copies since it was published in the fall of 2014, according to tracking company NPD BookScan.
That works out to royalty payments to Cuomo of $245 per book.
“All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life’’ had an original list price of $29.99. New copies of the hardcover book were being sold Monday on Amazon for $13.05.

When asked for comment, HarperCollins said that they don’t discuss financial deals they make with their authors. Cuomo’s office was similarly tight lipped, only noting that there was a “contractual obligation” on the part of the publisher to make the payment. And that’s a pretty nice obligation when you consider that the royalty check amounted to roughly 50% more than the Governor’s entire salary for the year from his day job.

The Obamas' got a record $60 million for their soon to be ghostwritten autobiographies, however I think that Random House will make out in the deal as every public and school libraries will be required to stock multiple copies of each.

It doesn't really matter if the publisher is obliged to pay if you already counted it as income on your taxes. Is he planning on counting it as a loss next year if not paid? Is he talking to Krugman about how to do Enron style accounting?